About Us

McKinsey estimates that 50% of all current work activities are technically automatable using currently demonstrated technologies. Crucially it only estimates that 5% of jobs can be fully automated. Our experience backs up their statistics and what we see is that AI can take over the more mundane and repetitive aspects of a job, while moving the workers from more doing roles, to more supervisory and strategic roles.

For data scientists this means letting them try out different types of feature engineering or model types almost at the speed of thought, not having to bother with the details of connecting everything or how it gets deployed but for us crucially this is not at all a black box process. We understand that the automation is an assistant, the workshop of the Renaissance master. A platform where the data scientist needs full transparency over the solution, easy ways to edit it, easy ways to jump into code and the ability to control and guide the automation to create the solutions as desired. The key is not push button automation but automation that puts the data scientist at the very heart of the solution and amplifies their ability to create, to get the best of man and machine.

We’ve been blown away by the results our customers have managed to achieve, typically in the range of 70 - 95% for task automation and for hyper-personalised marketing, driving revenue increases of as much as 56%. When businesses typically get very excited about single digit improvements in these figures, it’s easy to see that AI is not just another hype cycle fad but an incredibly transformative industrial revolution. While the mantra of the last decade was “every company is a tech company”, the mantra of this decade is “every company is an AI company” …if they want to survive.

The challenge for rapid widespread adoption so far, is that currently AI projects take between 3 and 36 months and only 8% are profitable. With those numbers we should expect a data science team to produce a profitable project every 20 years. This just doesn't offer a sustainable ROI for most businesses and is, we think, a large driver of the myriad articles questioning if the AI hype is justified. Luckily Kortical's technology has improved the success rate to 90%+ and shortened delivery to as little as 2 weeks to go from scratch to a deployed custom AI / Machine Learning solution. Our goal is to let people create new AI and ML solutions at the speed of thought and create the AI backbone that can fuel the change in the nature of work.

So far most industrial revolutions and technological advancements have increased the systematisation and repetitive nature of work. Take a photo of a McDonalds anywhere on earth and you’d probably struggle to tell them apart. People man the same station on a factory line or of a digitised workflow day in and day out. It’s quite surprising to think about but the modern idea of a job is only 150 years old, while some of us are lucky enough to have jobs that we are passionate about, the reality for many people is being stuck in a soul crushing repetitive job where they live for weekends and holidays. Their work doesn’t fire their imagination or give them a sense of purpose but is something that pays the bills and keeps their head above water.

AI offers multiple forms of salvation:

End Excessive Repetition

AI can take on repetitive thought labour even highly skilled thought labour for which you’d typically need a lawyer or other expert in their field. This means that almost any repetitive task can be handled automatically by AI, freeing up that person to work on the more exceptional tasks that come in and supervise and train the AI, rather than do the mind breaking work themselves. This can help alleviate the boredom that drives most people to quit their job, improve moral, retention, mental health and business outcomes.

Don’t become a machine

It lets people interact with technology in a more natural way. Computers have come a long way since the 80s where one wrong command could wipe the whole system. AI is now letting people talk to their devices in plain english or read our facial expressions and body movement so it can replicate our dance moves in VR.

AI is a revolution in letting people interact with technology in a more natural way and instead of training people to interact with machines by becoming more like a machine, we can let people be as expressive as they want and the machines will adapt to them.

Enable a post Scarcity Society

Lastly, longer term but we really believe that AI will enable a world with no hunger or no poverty. A world where people aren't so worried about how they can keep up with bills that they keep doing jobs that kill their passion and vest for life.

Currency can be thought of as a way of buying people's time, if you are rich you can consume far more goods and services than you can possibly create yourself in your lifetime and conversely for this to be possible there needs to be an underclass that will spend their time providing these goods and services for very little compensation.

For the first time in human history Machine Learning and AI offer a realistic opportunity to remove the driving forces relegating people to a lower class. In each successive industrial revolution we've automated more and more complex tasks. The 4th industrial revolution powered by AI and Machine Learning completes the loop and let's us automate complex thought labour which has never been possible before and means we can finally take people off the factory line.

The key here is that as we mentioned above, this is all possible with current technology. We don’t need thinking, feeling AI to make this possible. Nobody wants a toaster that develops a preference for certain types of bread and gets upset if you don’t use it or try to put it away. The current form of AI that has no more feelings than a rock, yet can take on the labour for which we previously needed an underclass is perfect for the automation of work.

This is the ultimate end of drudgery, where AI will automate enough of the production processes that we can create a Post Scarcity Society where we can share in the wealth created by AI so all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. At this point jobs become optional and people can choose to do work they find meaningful or pursue their passions. Some people worry that we will lose our purpose and sense of self. Yet some of the greatest art and science came from people who lived without having to worry about money. Other people will just be content to help out in their communities or travel the world.

We believe that it will result in a great unburdening of society and lead to people living more meaningful lives, spending time with the people they love, doing things that are important to them. Obviously there are a lot of dominoes that need to stack up beyond just creating the tech to enable it, for this to become a reality. We’ll need people to collectively decide this is the way they want to go and to get there in baby steps but the sooner we start laying the foundation, the more we’ll lessen any short term negative impacts from changing the nature of work.

Our Mission

We want to create the automation tools that data scientists and coders love because they are like an extension of their mind, allowing them to create the AI and Machine Learning solutions they want almost at the speed of thought.

Through this and the solutions they create using Kortical, we hope to help transform the nature of work and enable a Post Scarcity Society where people are happier, healthier and living more fulfilling lives and potentially even end the existence of an underclass completely.

We are very conscious of the fact that accelerating the change in the nature of work will be very disruptive for some people and we want to do what we can to help advocate and drive the changes that will help ensure that AI and Machine Learning have mostly a positive impact on people’s lives.

How we help

To this end the plan for creating a safety net that will protect against increased job insecurity in an increasingly gig based and automated economy that is getting the most traction is Universal Basic Income (UBI). A 2021 YouGov poll showed that 65% of people are now in favour of UBI, up from just under half the population in 2017. With the majority of the population behind UBI, we want to help increase the profile, so it makes the agenda and can be implemented before too many people are adversely affected. To do this we donate to and support Citizen's Basic Income Trust a charity that promotes UBI. The growing support for UBI is also heartening that given the technology we may as a society choose to create a Post Scarcity Society.

We also partner with the Learning and Work Institute to help adult learners upskill and adapt in an increasingly digital economy.